Book reviews

Simon Singh, The Code Book: The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary, Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography (London: Fourth Estate, 1999). Pp.xiii + 402, illus., bibliog., index. £16.99. ISBN 1–85702–879–1

Alan Judd, The Quest for C: Mansfield Cumming and the Founding of the Secret Service (London: HarperCollins, 1999). Pp.501, illus., bibliog., index. £19.99. ISBN 0–00–255901–3.

Michael Smith, Station X: Decoding Nazi Secrets (London: Channel 4 Books, 1999). Pp.184, 8pp illus., bibliog., index. £14.99. ISBN 0–7522–2189–2.

Hugh Skillen (ed.), The Enigma Symposium, 1998 (Privately printed, 1998). Pp.ix + 205, illus., facsims., no index. £9.95. ISBN 0–95–313300–1.

Frank B. Rowlett and David Kahn, The Story of Magic, Memoirs of an American Cryptologic Pioneer (Laguna Hills, CA: Aegean Park Press, 1998). Pp.266, 12 b/w photos., no index. $32.80. ISBN 0–8941–2273–8.

David Alvarez, Secret Messages: Codebreaking and American Diplomacy, 1930–1945. (Lawrence, KS: UP of Kansas 2000). Pp.292, photos, bibliog., index. $35. ISBN 0–7006–1013–8.

Michael E. Haas, In the Devil's Shadow: U.N. Special Operations During the Korean War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2000). Pp.xx + 243, 1 map, 5 illus, 26 photos, notes, bibliog., index, chronology. $29.95; £26.50. ISBN 1–55750–344–3.

Stephen G. Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999). Pp.257, bibliog., index. £31.95 (cloth); $17.95 (paper). ISBN 0–8078–2461–5.

L. V. Scott, Macmillan, Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis (London: Macmillan Press, 1999). Pp.x + 251, bibliog., index. £45; $65. ISBN 0–333–71470–9.

Ezra Y. Siff, Why the Senate Slept: The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the Beginning of America's Vietnam War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999). Pp.xi + 172, illus., notes, bibliog., appendices, index. $37.50. ISBN 0–275–96389–6.

Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of the War in Vietnam (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999). Pp.xxv + 529, bibliog., index. $35. ISBN 0–520–21511–7.

John Prados, The Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War (New York: John Wiley, 1999). Pp.432, index. $35. ISBN 0–471–25465–7.

Kenneth Conboy and Dale Andrade, Spies & Commandos: How America Lost the Secret War in North Vietnam (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2000). Pp.347, illus., bibliog., index. $34.95. ISBN 0–7006–1002–2.

Anne Hessing Cahn, Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998). Pp.232, index. $24.50/£17.38 (paper). ISBN 0–271–01791–0.

Thomas K. Adams, US Special Operations Forces in Action: The Challenge of Unconventional Warfare (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers, 1998). Pp.xxviii + 360, 11 photos, glossary of acronyms and terms, bibliog., index. £42.50/$59.50 (cloth); £19.50/$27.50 (paper). ISBN 0–7146–4795–0 and ‐4350–5.     

Nobody Knows Best: Alternative Perspectives on Forest Management and Governance in Southeast Asia

In this paper we propose a framework for understanding how dominant perspectives, or worldviews, influence the crafting of institutions, and how these, in turn, constrain the functions and goals of knowledge systems. Alternative perspectives carry their own set of assumptions and beliefs about who should be making the rules, where the best knowledge lies to guide decisions, and about where more knowledge is needed. Initially, four contrasting perspectives are elaborated: state-, market-, greens-, and locals-know-best. We illustrate the framework by exploring the recent history of forest governance in Southeast Asia, finding several examples of battles of perspectives leading to a new dominant perspective. In each case the dominant perspective itself, old or new, is shown to be defective in some critical way and was, or should be, replaced. The problem is that each of the perspectives considers the world as knowable, manageable, and relatively constant, or at most changing only slowly. Ecological and socio-political crises, however, are recurrent. Management plans and regulations or policies that aim to establish the land-use allocation, the best crop, the best forest management system or the best price or system of incentives, are doomed to failure. If uncertainties are accepted as fundamental, solutions as temporary, and scientific knowledge as useful but limited, then Nobody Knows Best is a modest, but effective heuristic for forest governance.     

The new nihilism

He is author of Radicalism and the Revolt Against Reason; Winners and Losers; Ideology and Utopia in the United States;among other works.     

Whither U?

Louis G. Tornatzky, recently named director of the Southern Technology Council, is a regular commentator with this journal. Previously he was a scientific fellow in the Office of the President of the Industrial Technology Institute, Ann Arbor, MI. Dr. Tornatzky received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He has coauthored nine books and monographs and more than 80 articles and papers.